Ode to Poets in a Dive Bar On a Saturday Night

by Roy Dorman

Dickinson and Frost are sitting together in a corner booth, each with a beer in front of them, talking about whatever poets talk about when they’re out on the town.  Emily’s dressed to the nines; she looks ready for anything.  Robert, in contrast, is in jeans and a ragged tweed poet’s sport coat with suede patches on the elbows.  A Sinatra tune’s on the jukebox; Frank’s singing that if he can make it in New York, he can probably make it anywhere.

Charles Bukowski passes their booth on his way to the Men’s Room.  He drops an exaggerated wink at Emily and she very demurely winks right back at him.  Robert snickers at this exchange around a mouthful of beer and gives Bukowski a jaunty salute that ends in a “go away” wave.  Bukowski tells them not to go anywhere; he’ll be right back.

When he returns, Emily and Robert are laughing uproariously over something that Emily has just said.  Bukowski sits down next to Emily on her side of the booth with his own glass and a fresh pitcher of beer.  In an aside to the two, he mumbles that waxing poetic is thirsty work.  Emily continues her story about the carryings-on of two robins that have been having morning sex lately on the lawn below the blossoming cherry tree outside her kitchen window.  

When she’s finished, Bukowski launches into a colorful narration of how he had first won and then lost a bundle at the track that afternoon.  While Bukowski’s lamenting his bad luck, Robert’s watching the snowflakes sparkle in the glow of the lone street light outside the bar and is wondering where he will sleep tonight.  He looks for some clue from Emily, and as if she has read his mind, she looks into his eyes, still listening to Bukowski, and has her lips form a quick air kiss to him.  

For the next couple of hours, the three of them talk nostalgically about other Saturday nights they’ve spent in other bars in other cities with other poets.  Much later, when the bartender gives the last call, the three get up to leave and stumble arm and arm out into the early morning blizzard.